


Descend (Obsidian Heart Mix)

by Starcrossedsky



Series: Obsidian Heart Mix [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, backstory fic, guest starring au ra xeno headcanons, the mildest of SB spoilers maybe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 04:38:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11706969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrossedsky/pseuds/Starcrossedsky
Summary: It was only the two of us, hearts beating synchronizedCalamity comes. And after the break, the weather.(Or: In the grand scheme of things, one father figure's death means little. In your life, it means everything.)





	Descend (Obsidian Heart Mix)

**Author's Note:**

> I should admit, in retrospect, it might have been better to do all these as a single, chaptered fic - 
> 
> Look, it kind of got away from me, okay?

( _\- then let it pass from your lips. Slower, slower..._

 _You must understand, no dream lasts forever._ )

\----

Ishgard, with its astrologians, knows of the approaching Calamity long before anyone else. Dalamud's growth in the sky does not go unrecorded, and the word filters down, lords to knights to commonfolk to Brume.

The problem is that no one understands what it means.

\----

You are Brumefolk, through and through. So is Sid, for all that he's only lived here for a few years. You both feel the change coming in your bones, in the chill of the wind - 

Like many others of the Brume, you prepare as best you can. Dry goods, extra blankets, whatever your meager budget can afford.

\----

Before Calamity, catastrophe.

They come for your master.

\----

By some stroke of luck, you and Sid aren't home. You return from the wider lands of Coerthas to the door kicked in, signs of a struggle, the mattress the two of you share in the front room slashed in half. 

"They'll have him at the Tribunal," Sid says, as he bends to inspect the overturned cookpot. "It can't have been too long - look," he waves a soup-covered finger at you. It steams faintly in the cold. "Still kind of warm."

You nod, in a daze, your quick wit for once deserting you, and then - "You can't go. They'll have us all, Sid."

Because if they try to take him as well, you know what you'll do. There is no way you would let them have him while you are still alive.

And yet - he fixes his eyes on you, and you feel the anger behind them. It's a familiar rage, his lifeblood as much as it is yours, but it's the first time there's even a hint of turning it on each other. You've fought, of course you have, but never like that.

"Are you going to stop me?"

You hesitate, then shake your head. "No." You don't have any right. If you should all die today - 

People find their way to the path on their own, sometimes. Another will come, sooner or later.

"Just, you know, at least _try_ not to be particularly memorable, as impossible as that is for you."

At least it shatters the aura of anger around him. Sid huffs and doesn't reply, which, under the circumstances, is as close as you're probably going to get to making him smile.

\----

It's trial by combat, because of course it is. That's the only kind of trial people like you stand a chance in. By the Fury's grace, sometimes people make it out.

That day is not this day. Your master is old and tired, in spite of his skill. His opponent is one of those new-and-upcoming geniuses, the ones who don't believe in mercy, who'll probably end up in the white of the Heavens' Ward someday.

You know how it will end. The two of you watch from a dark, hidden corner, as the faithful of Ishgard cheer the spectacle, the death of another heretic, of a knight who betrayed them.

No one stands near you, which is a good thing, as both you and Sid, hidden almost entirely under a cloak, occasionally give off the same telltale red wisps as the man below you. The stone around you seems like it should buckle, under the weight of your anger-charged aether.

( _Someday, they will make the same spectacle of you, and though he does not watch, you know in your heart that Sid makes the same wispy sparks as he stands guard over Rielle. You know that the red flashes will be all the worse for his not watching -_

 _You know that it's the only reason he survives. He is the flame in your abyss, and you his._ )

Your master knows that you are watching. He does not look at your dark corner, but there is no way that he could not know. He as good as said as much, when they read the charges.

( _"All I did was protect a child from those who would seek to harm him." Words you will echo, in your time._ )

He will not survive. Mail on mail, you grip Sid's hand in yours, children again. He will not survive. In spite of all his years of service, the church will not even give him a burial.

He knew this, when he embarked upon the path. So did you. 

Damnable tears swell up in your eyes anyway.

He shows you every technique he has, some you have not even seen before, your only chance to see them in action. You commit every blow to memory, your aetherial senses sharp with concentration - your background in conjury gives you an edge over Sid, here, and you're going to need everything you can get to puzzle some of these out, soul stones or no.

Over the din of battle and the cries of the crowd, you can still hear his voice, a last message as though it were spoken in your ear - 

( _"A heart bleeds, a man weeps, a soul burns. Thence comes the darkness, to consume. Yet even in the depths, the flame endures! Submit to the flame and harness the abyss..."_

 _It will take living, dying, and living again, before you come to understand, your body dragged about by the enflamed heart of a hero whose abyss spilleth over. Better than Sid, though, considering he needs it explained by moogles._ )

"Fray," Sid says into your ear. "We have to - "

"We _can't_ ," you say, cutting him off. The abyss flickers, red bouncing between the two of you.

You can feel it, his hot will, ready to destroy everything in sight. It burns even you, but you must hold him back. You must keep him alive, even if he comes to hate you for it.

Another flash of shadows in the arena below you, and then - a pain-filled sound, a blade sliding home, a crowd's cheer. Sid goes to jump over the side, the air around him practically crackling with his energy.

You are faster, still. Your hand snaps up into the depths of his hood - you know that a hand on his shoulder or even his blade hand would not serve to hold him back. A set of mailed fingers digging into his horn, on the other hand...

He grunts. "Let me go, Fray."

"I will _not_ ," you snap. "There is a difference between fighting for justice and _throwing your life away_ , Sidurgu. You're twenty years old, I would have thought you'd have learned it by now."

He turns his head just enough to direct that hate-filled gaze on you. You allow the motion of his head, but do not loosen your grip. In spite of their tough appearance, au ra horns are surprisingly delicate and extremely sensitive, both ear and balance-system in one. Even minor damage to it would be a serious, debilitating injury.

You are strong enough to crush it between your fingers, if you have to. You flare your power through your fingertips, make sure that he knows it. A Sidurgu who has to learn anew how to walk in a straight line is still a Sidurgu who is _alive_.

"Sorry we can't all be as quick of students as _you_ ," he hisses, and even though you know the words well up from the abyss, that doesn't make them any less _real_. You can both shrug off sword blows that would fell lesser men, and make up for it in the blood of your enemies. That doesn't mean swords stop hurting.

" _Leave it_ ," you hiss. "It's over, anyway."

Below you, white takes victory, and sweeps the black from the board. The two of you are among the last to leave, because you do not let go of Sid's horn until every other target for his rage, knight and judge, is gone.

\----

You manage to get to your master's body, dumped in the Brume, before it's too picked over. The two of you bury him outside the city in dark silence, beneath a swelling red moon.

\----

The three Grand Companies send their armies to Cartenau.

Ishgard sends none.

\----

But all gather on the south side of the city, where they watch the moon shatter, the fire take the sky. Ishgard watches, in a deeper fear than any other, as the dreadwyrm, the primal, the _brother of Nidhogg_ takes to the skies.

You watch from an obscure garden in the Pillars, far away from the screaming of the people in the Brume. You don't know where Sid watches it from. At that point, the two of you have not seen each other in days, have not spoken in weeks.

You watch Bahamut rain death upon the land, and wish his hand was there for you to grab and squeeze between your fingers.

\----

At first, Ishgard thinks itself spared by the Calamity. There is a massive, crystalline crater in the southern part of the central highlands, angry red arcing up around the center, but the city itself, and most of the farmlands, have escaped the worst of the damage. It is nothing compared to the way the Shroud rebels, the fall of Ul'dah's walls, the waves that nearly destroy Limsa Lominsa. Certainly, it is nothing compared to the now uninhabitable killing field itself, in the heart of Mor Dhona.

Then comes the snow. The ice. The unceasing, out-of-season blizzards. People flee their homes and settlements in the highlands, and with nowhere else to put them, the Brume grows more crowded than ever. You can barely spit without hitting some displaced farmhand.

Then, the abandonment of Falcon's Nest - the avalanche - no survivors.

\----

( _One survivor. But hers is another story._ )

\----

There are riots. The lowborn are hungry, and they have nothing to lose. Then they are starving, and their children are dying.

You are right there - if you're being honest, it is often your voice that incites otherwise peaceful protests into violence. It is not gentle, but you will not rest while the highborn have warm fires and full bellies and the people around you have nothing. You stand in the center of it, giving a voice to the voiceless.

There are more orphans in the Brume than ever. Seeing them run through the streets twists at your gut. The pains of hunger when you give them whatever scraps you can hunt down hurt less.

\----

In the crowds at the protests, the riots, you often see a huge figure, shrouded in a heavy cloak, standing at the edges, watching. Sometimes, you even see the glint of black mail underneath.

\----

It takes months, before you miss him more than you are angry with him. Months, and numerous narrow escapes with the knights, who would love to get their hands on you, an instigator, a dark knight, only half a step from a heretic.

(The heretics are hungry, too, and they're getting organized. You start to hear things, filtered through the rumor mill of the Brume, which is about the only part of the city that's as lively as ever beneath the growing blanket of snow.)

\----

You snort every time you hear someone propose that the Holy See should petition the other city-states for aid, for food and fuel and housing for the poor who now cram the lower half of the city.

Ishgard has abandoned the Alliance. Even if it had not, the other cities are too full of their own problems, their own starving refugees. The Holy See will have to save herself.

It is a land that truly belongs to the Fury, now.

\----

You find Sid standing at the edge of the wall, overlooking the place where the city's snows - and the corpses of heretics - are dumped over the walls. He is still deeply cloaked, but there is no way you couldn't know it to be him. 

The aura of anger still flickers about him, too, but for the first time since your master's trial, you find the feeling of it on your skin welcoming, freeing. Seeing him reminds you, in a way nothing else does, how deeply you can drop into it, how you can get drunk off it, that balance of living and death.

You want to be in his abyss, in his arms again. You wonder if he wants it as desperately.

Only one way to find out.

"Sid?" you say, coming up close to him, just outside of reach. And then, more seriously, "Sidurgu," because there's no way he doesn't know you're there, even if he doesn't react.

His voice is almost a growl, rough as a dragon's. "What _is_ it, Fray." You can hear the anger still in it, feel it licking up your arms - free of armor, now, since you've been playing the part of a 'peaceful' protester again.

You take a deep breath. "I'm sorry."

That, at least, gets him to look at you. His eyes are almost invisible under the hood, but you can still see the faint hint of brilliant reflective color.

"I'm sorry," you repeat, and then, "Not that I regret it. Not that I wouldn't do it again, because I would."

A narrowing of his eyes, until the blue-green is almost gone from them.

"But you're all I have," you continue. "We're all either of us has. And a house divided cannot stand."

 _I want you back,_ you try to say, with your eyes, with the expressions you normally keep hidden behind a helm. _I miss you._

Sid closes his eyes, and comes out of the abyss. The aura around you falls, dissolving into the snowflakes like it was never there.

"I know," he says, finally. "And - you were right. I'd do something stupid if you weren't there, and we both know it."

You allow yourself to feel the faintest hints of hope, as he steps down from the wall, over to you. 

He punches you in the gut. You double over, instantly, because his fist is armored and your abdomen is not, and _Fury_ does it hurt. While you're catching your breath, he says, "There. Now you're really sorry, and I can forgive you."

When you can manage to look up, still clutching your gut, he's wearing one of those little smiles of his, and his eyes are lit up, blue-green on black in all their glory.

"Arserag," you say, before wrapping your arms around him. "Come on, let's go home."

\----

You do go home, back to the tiny house (if it can even be called _that_ ) that the two of you shared with your master. You kick out the squatters, and later you'll put things to rights, get yourselves a new dirty mattress to curl up on together.

That night, though - that night, the floor seems perfect, as long as he's on it with you, the two of you curled up on his spread cloak. You kiss him and run gentler fingers down the curves of his horns, strip him out of his armor and clothes until you can see every last patch of scales on his frosty skin.

Then you kill the lights, and lose yourself in him once more.

\----

( _No matter what horrors the two of you are complicit in, even responsible for, by day, every night you bring him back and tell him with your hands -_

_**You are still a good person.** _

_For all your craftiness with words, it is never quite what you mean to say._ )


End file.
